My heart goes out to those who have lost

Be careful what you ask for ... you just might get it.

I have been cackling happily over the prospect of an empty nest for a week, with the oldest at college, and the two youngest at camp. Unlimited computer time at home! No Spongebob Squarepants blaring through the house! No piles of dirty socks found in strange places ...

No noise.

It didn't really hit me until Monday night when I got home. Buzz and I have a game where he silently opens the front door from behind as I come up the steps.

"I love my magic door!" I always say.

Monday, I stood on the doorstep and waited, then laughed at myself when I realized my magic door opener was at church camp exactly 77.3 miles away. Then, I went inside and squalled.

Later that night, a rerun of "The Soup" was on, one we'd missed over the weekend, and before I thought, I yelled for Ben to come watch it with us.

No noise. No boys.

I actually did the dishes myself that night, and two loads of laundry. Housework is right down there with IRS audits on my Fun List, but it let me slip into zombie robot mode and focus on work instead of my hushed, empty house. It was bad enough that my husband was working late that night, but even the cats were quiet. They were curled up and sleeping instead of methodically destroying all things on flat surfaces. (Kismet's favorite game is to sit at the edge of a table and knock things off, watching them fall to the floor and break. Karma's favorite game is watching Kismet duck from whatever gets thrown at him after he does this.)

When we were camping this weekend, for some reason, my husband and I started reminiscing about the early days of our marriage. We had an ancient, concave mattress and we had to sleep with an arm and leg thrown over the side to keep from rolling downhill and crashing into each other in the middle.

We had a tiny, 12-inch black and white TV that could pick up two channels if we had enough aluminum foil, atmospheric convergence, and the moon was in the seventh house. We slept late on Saturdays, then got up and cooked brunch, still in our PJs, dancing to Beatles songs and building castles in the air.

We slept late on Sundays and had muffins and tea while watching Mystery!, thanking heavens that the public station was one of the two we could pick up. It was dream time, an interlude of privacy and peace at the beginning of our marriage, when the roots were allowed to sink deep and grow.

Those roots anchored us for the tempest to come -- three hellion boys with a knack for breaking, barfing, bleeding, laughing, loving, and losing everything they got their hands on. When I was pregnant with our first, Scott, everyone told us what to expect, from colic to college. No one ever told us how much we would laugh.

That's the sound I was missing this week! Not that Terry and I don't laugh, but after 22 years, we know all our jokes and rarely cut loose and laugh out loud. With a single twitch of an eyebrow, my husband can make me giggle because I'll know exactly what he was thinking.

But there's nothing like a child's belly-laugh. Even cool teenager Ben has a laugh that makes you want to laugh along with him, but when Buzz gets tickled and starts up, you can be three rooms away and find yourself laughing too, without knowing what the joke was.

So empty house, no children's laughter -- a real recipe for a pity party.

But then I remembered that there are two households in this county who are also missing children's laughter. There are two children who won't ever fill their homes with squeals and giggles again.

Yes, I had an empty nest this week, but only for a week. In eight years, when the last one leaves the nest for college, there will more than likely be a grandchick to fill in the spaces, and there are phone calls and computers and cars to make sure we always keep in touch. A week is a blink of an eye.

My thoughts and prayers go out to those who have lost their little ones in these last few, horrible weeks. May the memory of your children's laughter always fill your hearts, telling you they are with you still.

-- Mary Reeves is a staff writer for the Times-Gazette. She can be reached at (931) 684-1200, ext. 215, or by e-mail at mreeves@t-g.com.